Kinetic theory of electromagnetic plane wave obliquely incident on bounded plasma slab

The effects of electromagnetic plane waves obliquely incident on a warm bounded plasma slab of finite length L are studied by solving the coupled Vlasov-Maxwell set of equations. It is shown that the solution can be greatly simplified in the limit where thermal effects are most important by expanding in small parameters and introducing self-similar variables. These solutions reveal that the coupling of thermal effects with the angle of incidence is negligible in the region of bounce resonance and anomalous skin effect. In the region of the anomalous skin effect, the heating is shown to scale linearly with the anomalous skin depth δ_a when δ_a "L, in agreement with previous authors. Furthermore, for δ_a "L, the heating is shown to decay with 1/δ_a3. The transmission is found to be exponentially larger than that predicted from a local theory in the appropriate region of the anomalous skin effect. © 2010 American Institute of Physics.